10 Fierce Indigenous Women Dominating Modern Sports (From the WNBA to the PWHL)

Alissa Pili entered the WNBA as the eighth pick in the 2024 draft. Abby Roque led the 2026 PWHL playoffs with eight points. Jocelyne Larocque returned from a fourth Olympic Games with another medal. And Brigette Lacquette moved from Canada’s blue line into an NHL scouting room.

That is what Indigenous women in modern sports look like: scorers, champions, scouts, advocates and visible leaders in arenas that did not always make room for them.

Who are some of the most influential Indigenous women in sports today? This editorial countdown includes active professional athletes, retired champions, a front-office trailblazer and a sports-media pioneer. The ranking is subjective; the achievements are not. Each woman is identified through her own Nation or community connection rather than a single pan-Indigenous label.

Indigenous Women in Sports at a Glance

10. Lauren Schad: Volleyball Without Borders

Lauren Schad carried Lakota identity from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe onto NCAA courts and into European professional volleyball. The 6-foot-2 middle blocker became an All-American at the University of San Diego and earned a place in USA Volleyball’s collegiate national-team pipeline before playing professionally overseas.

Her influence extends beyond the score sheet. Schad co-founded Indigenous Athletes for Change and has used the international reach of sport to bring attention to Indigenous rights and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. She shows that a professional career abroad can still be accountable to home.

9. Victoria Bach: A Scorer Built for Big Ice

Victoria Bach, connected to the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte at Tyendinaga, left Boston University with 198 career points and program records that made her one of the most productive players in Terriers history. With Canada, she won world championship gold in 2021 and 2022.

The PWHL gave that skill a durable professional stage. After beginning with Toronto, Bach moved to Ottawa and helped the Charge reach the 2025 Walter Cup Final. Her official PWHL profile now lists her with Ottawa, proof that an elite playmaker can keep finding new roles in a rapidly evolving league.

8. Ashton Locklear: Precision Under Pressure

Ashton Locklear’s signature event lasted only seconds, but there was nowhere to hide. On uneven bars, every hand placement, release and landing had to be exact.

The Lumbee gymnast won world team gold with the United States in 2014, captured U.S. uneven-bars titles in 2014 and 2016, and served as an alternate for the 2016 Olympic team. USA Gymnastics records her championship résumé, including a world final in 2017. Her competitive chapter is part of the sport’s recent history, and her visibility remains meaningful for Native gymnasts entering a discipline where Indigenous representation is still rare.

7. Mary Spencer: A Champion at Women’s Boxing’s Olympic Door

When women’s boxing debuted at the 2012 Olympics, Mary Spencer arrived with the credentials of a favourite and the responsibility of a pioneer. The Ojibway boxer from the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation had already won world titles in 2005, 2008 and 2010, plus five Pan American championships.

She finished fifth in London, but a single Olympic result cannot contain her impact. Team Canada’s profile describes a champion who helped make women’s boxing visible to a generation that would grow up assuming the Olympic ring belonged to women, too.

6. Ashley Callingbull: Indigenous Visibility on the Biggest Screens

Ashley Callingbull is not on this list for a stat line. She is here because modern sport is shaped by who gets seen, who holds the microphone and who is trusted to represent a hometown crowd.

The Enoch Cree Nation advocate and model became the first Indigenous First Nations woman featured in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit in 2022. She has also worked inside major Alberta arenas, including as a special in-game host for the Edmonton Oilers’ Indigenous Celebration Night. For young Treaty 6 fans watching the jumbotron, that kind of presence changes the room.

5. Kali Reis: From Championship Belts to an Emmy Nomination

Kali Reis fought under the name K.O. Mequinonoag and built a boxing career defined by nerve. The Seaconke Wampanoag fighter won world titles across weight classes and competed in the first women’s boxing match televised by HBO.

Then she made another unlikely leap. Reis starred as Detective Evangeline Navarro in True Detective: Night Country, earning a 2024 nomination for outstanding supporting actress from the Television Academy. Boxing gave her command of pressure; acting revealed how far that presence could travel.

4. Abby Roque: Faceoffs, Physicality and a 2026 Playoff Surge

Abby Roque, a member of Wahnapitae First Nation with Ojibwe roots, made history in 2022 as the first Indigenous woman to play on the United States Olympic women’s hockey team. She returned with a silver medal and kept building a reputation as one of the game’s best faceoff centres.

Her professional story has moved quickly. After two seasons in New York, Roque joined the Montréal Victoire for 2025-26. She responded with 22 regular-season points, then produced four goals and four assists in nine playoff games. Those numbers, recorded on her official PWHL profile, made her one of the postseason’s defining players.

3. Jocelyne Larocque: Four Olympics and a Blue-Line Standard

Jocelyne Larocque has spent more than a decade turning elite forwards away from the net. The Métis defender from Ste. Anne, Manitoba, is not oversized by professional-hockey standards. Her advantage is anticipation: reading the next pass, closing space and making a hard game look orderly.

In 2026, Larocque completed her fourth Olympics and added silver to a collection that already included gold in 2014 and 2022 and silver in 2018. With the Ottawa Charge, she followed that Olympic run with four points in eight PWHL playoff games. Her league profile now shows 83 regular-season appearances across the PWHL’s first three seasons.

2. Brigette Lacquette: From Olympic Ice to the NHL Scouting Room

Brigette Lacquette grew up between her mother’s connection to Cote First Nation and her father’s Métis home community of Mallard, Manitoba. In 2018, she became the first First Nations woman to play on Canada’s Olympic women’s hockey team and won silver in PyeongChang.

Her next breakthrough came off the ice. Chicago hired Lacquette as a professional scout in 2021, opening another route into hockey leadership for Indigenous women. The NHL later described how other women followed her into scouting and leaned on her mentorship. Read more in Powwow Times’ earlier profile of Brigette Lacquette’s Olympic breakthrough.

1. Alissa Pili: Alaska Native Power in the WNBA

Alissa Pili did not whisper her way into professional basketball. At Utah, the Iñupiaq and Samoan forward used footwork, touch and remarkable strength to become the 2023 Pac-12 Player of the Year. Minnesota selected her eighth overall in 2024, making Pili the first Alaska Native woman drafted into and to play in the WNBA.

Her first two professional seasons included 36 WNBA games and flashes of the inside-out scoring that made her a college star. In 2026, the Los Angeles Sparks brought her into their player-development program before releasing her in late August. That transaction does not erase the barrier she crossed. It makes the next chapter real: a young professional still fighting for the roster space she helped other Alaska Native girls imagine.

Pili’s arrival matters because it connects the draft stage to the communities watching from Alaska and across Indian Country. It says the path is visible now, even when it remains difficult.

More Than Representation

These women are not interchangeable symbols. They come from distinct Nations and communities, compete in different countries and carry different relationships to sport. What links them is not a single Indigenous experience. It is the scale of what they have made possible: an Olympic first, an NHL scouting career, a WNBA draft call, a world title, a record book, a young fan who can finally point to someone and say, “There.”

That same combination of speed, teamwork and living Indigenous identity powers Indian Relay, North America’s most extreme horse sport. The arenas change. The excellence does not.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was the first Alaska Native woman in the WNBA?

Alissa Pili was the first Alaska Native woman drafted into and to play in the WNBA. The Minnesota Lynx selected her eighth overall in 2024.

Who was the first First Nations woman on Canada’s Olympic women’s hockey team?

Brigette Lacquette became the first First Nations woman to play for Canada’s Olympic women’s hockey team at the 2018 PyeongChang Games, where Canada won silver.

Which Indigenous women are playing in the PWHL?

This list includes Jocelyne Larocque of the Ottawa Charge, Abby Roque of the Montréal Victoire and Victoria Bach, whose official league profile lists her with Ottawa. Rosters can change, so official PWHL team and player pages are the best source for current status.

Which athlete inspires you most? Add her name in the comments, and tell us which emerging Indigenous athlete Powwow Times should watch next.